My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 248 in my name. Because of the lateness of the hour I will speak briefly, but throughout these debates the Committee has repeatedly expressed concern about the scope and nature of the SI procedure. Time and again, noble Lords in Committee have said, “This is not amendable. We cannot change what is proposed. This is government by fiat and declaration”. The noble Lord, Lord Beith, and I spent many years in the House of Commons, where we lamented the fact that statutory instruments could not be amended. It is a great defect in our constitutional process. Statutory instruments are a form of legislation; in fact, they are a form of legislation by fiat or declaration—and that is an extraordinary thing in a parliamentary democracy.
The amendments that I have tabled have just two objectives: one is to assert the primacy of the House of Commons, which must have primacy in these matters, and the other is to say that legislation should be amendable. As two propositions, they are wholly unobjectionable. What are the objections, if there be any? Actually, they are the objections of the Executive throughout the centuries: it makes life for the Government rather more difficult. As a parliamentarian, I am bound to say that I do not find that a very impressive argument.
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There is one other objection, however, that has to be addressed very seriously: the number of statutory instruments that are going to be brought forward under the Bill. We are told that there will be 800 to 1,000, of which perhaps 20% will be affirmative resolutions. That is a serious challenge and one that I acknowledge, but there may be a way through it—a compromise, building in part on what my noble friend Lord Hodgson has been saying. There is absolutely no reason why, in Standing Orders, we should not appoint a committee to identify which statutory instruments of an affirmative character may require amendment. That decision could then enable the SI to be amended. If we did that, only a relatively small number of statutory instruments would be the subject of
amendments—but it would assert the principle of parliamentary control and, building on what the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said, it may serve as a precedent for the way in which we handle other SIs arising from different legislation.